Ron's Revenge
by Zirconiafire
Summary: Fred messes with Ron one too many times. Ron finally gets back at him. Written for the Clue Prank Competition.


**A/N: This was written for My Dear Professor McGonagall's Clue Prank Competition. My prompts were: Ron Weasley, 'Orchideous', and the DADA classroom. Hope you enjoy!**

**Warning: Mild language. I didn't think it was worth changing the rating to 'T', but just thought I'd mention it in case.**

**Disclaimer: I DON'T OWN ANYTHING! In fact, JKR basically owns my life. **

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><p>Ron's Revenge<p>

It was Friday evening, and Ron Weasley was pissed. He stormed up the stairs in the Gryffindor Common Room into his dormitory, and flopped onto his four-poster, giving a loud moan and not caring who heard.

Perhaps fortunately, the only other person in the dormitory was Harry, who had been staring idly at the Marauders' Map, ad who, upon seeing (and hearing) Ron's rather dramatic entrance, hastily folded it up, flushing rather guiltily. The small part of Ron's mind _not_ consumed with rage and residual embarrassment noted that his best friend had been paying particular attention to the Ravenclaw Tower, where (Ron guessed), a Small dot labeled 'Cho Chang' was quite unaware it was being watched.

"What's up, mate?" Harry's face had carefully rearranged itself into a look of puzzlement and concern.

"Fred!" Ron spat sourly. "That miserable git…" he muttered something else darkly, his face blotchy purple and his ears bright red.

Harry's expression immediately shifted into one of sympathy, though he still appeared confused. "What did he do this time?"

"He…he-!" Ron buried his face in his hands and groaned, a bit quieter than before, and whispered hoarsely, "I will _never_ be able to live this down… _laughing_, the lot of them… and_ She_…"

"Ron. If you don't tell me what's going on _now_, I'll have to jinx it out of you."

Ron peered through his fingers at his friend, warily eyeing the wand Harry was twiddling nonchalantly, and then sighed, sitting up to face him.

"Alright, so it was right after dinner…"

It was right after dinner, and the yawning students were all heading to their common rooms. Their guests, too, were turning in, off to either the powder-blue carriage, or the old ship. Ron Weasley set his jaw firmly, and stood up from the Gryffindor table.

"Are you sure about this, Ron?" Hermione stood up with him, glancing at him and then over to the Ravenclaw table apprehensively. "You remember what happened last time…"

Ron followed her gaze, eyes lingering a bit longer than hers had, before dragging his thoughts back to his and Hermione's conversation, looking more resigned than ever.

He and Hermione had spent their dinner discussing this, after Harry had rushed off to the common room, muttering something about potions, and Snape poisoning him. Ron felt a huge amount of shame and embarrassment ever since he had foolishly asked Fleur Delacour to the Yule Ball, so much that he couldn't even look at her without going purple in the face and feeling ill. Ron just wanted to apologize to her, to get some of the weight of the last few days off his chest.

"I've got to, Hermione. And now, before I run out of nerve…"

"Alright then… Ohh, Ron! Take these-" Hermione whipped out her wand and muttered "_Orchideous!_", handing him the bouquet of white and yellow flowers. "White lilies and Daffodils. For peace and respect. Give them to her." She gave him an encouraging smile and a little push.

"Hermione, you are a geni-"

"Go!" But there was a smile in her voice.

Ron stumbled a bit, then regained his balance ads he steeled himself and walked over, his insides twisting wildly. He approached the blonde veela girl, took a deep breath and said, "Um, excusez-moi? Fleur?"

Fleur Delacour whipped around I her seat, nearly smacking Ron with her sheet of long silvery-blonde hair as she did so. She looked up at him expectantly, but when she saw who it was, her expression soured. She started to turn back to her friend, with whom she had been talking and who was now looking skeptically at Ron.

"No, wait, Fleur, please-"

She looked back at him impatiently. "Quoi? What eez it zis time?"

"Look, I just wanted to say I'm really…désolé-" The French word for 'sorry' that Hermione had taught him was twisted by his terrible French accent, "-For being so…weird before. I don't want you to hate me for…that."

Fleur's expression began to soften. Ron was beyond relieved, but tried his best not to show it. He suddenly remembered the flowers he had hastily stuck behind his back before he'd started talking. Quickly, he brought them out, and started to hand them to her, then stopped and stared, horrified, at the flowers in front of him.

Wilted would be a nice way to say it. Rotten might be closer. The pristine white petals of the lilies had turned brown and some had fallen off. The daffodils had shriveled in o themselves and darkened to an ugly grey-orange. The stems had all drooped depressingly and even as he watched, a few flower heads fell, as if in slow motion, to the floor.

Fleur saw the flowers, gave a wide-eyed gasp, before throwing Ron a piercing glare that was both offended and disgusted in equal measure. She got up, pushed Ron away angrily, spat something at him in French that sounded like "Est-ça ton idée d'un tour?" before stalking off with her friend.

The blessedly few Ravenclaws around him started smirking and snorting, but Ron's attention was fixated several feet away, where two ginger-haired twins were laughing uproariously. Or at least he assumed they were, Ron couldn't hear over the furious ringing in his ears.

He strode back to the Gryffindor table, right over to his cackling brothers, and stopped an inch from George's nose.

"What," he whispered murderously, "the _hell_ was that?"

George took a step back and held up his hands in surrender. "Don't look at me, bro. It was all him." He stuck his thumb at Fred, still chortling.

Ron shifted his glare to the other twin. "_Well_?"

"Why, it was only a simple ageing potion, my dear Ronald," Fred replied, feigning a Percy-like pompousness, though with a wicked glint in his eye. He took out a tiny bottle of potion. "One little drop as we passed. And I daresay you know my prowess at those-"

"You little son of a b-"

"Careful, Ronnie, that's your mother as much as it is ours."

Ron wanted to scream, the hex Fred (ad maybe George, for good measure) into a thousand tiny, worthless pieces. Unfortunately for that plan, there were still several teachers up at the staff table, so his rather less than quick-thinking brain helpfully provided him with one other option: to thunder away in a towering rage. Which he immediately acted on, though mentally condemning Fred to an eternity of living with Aragog's descendants.

"And now," Ron concluded in his recounting to Harry, "Fleur will never look at me again, all those Ravenclaws think I'm the world's biggest idiot, and Fred and George got merrily away with everything!" He sat on his bed, sighing loudly.

Harry winced sympathetically. "Bad luck, Ron. But you know…" Harry unthinkingly tapped his wand on his knee, sending out red sparks and nearly igniting the Marauders' map, "What d'you think Fred or George would do if something like this happened to them? They wouldn't mope around- no offense, mate," he quickly looked up at Ron, who only gave a half-hearted shrug, "_they would try to get even._" Harry gave his friend a small, grim smile before settling his wand and glasses on his bedside table and laying down, leaving the implications of that statement to settle, and Ron to ponder his revenge.

No strokes of genius came to Ron, however, until the next day after dinner. He, Hermione and Harry were sitting in the common room, in their favourite armchairs next to the fire. Hermione was diligently working on some complicated-looking Arithmancy chart, Harry was scribbling a conclusion to his potions essay, and Ron, who had given up on his homework about half an hour ago, was idly doodling images of Snape dying various gruesome deaths on a scrap bit of parchment. He had already done beautiful renderings of Snape being flushed down a toilet and Snape being impaled with the sword of Gryffindor, and was just finishing up a sure masterpiece -Snape being mauled by a hippogriff- when Fred climbed through the portrait hole, complaining loudly to George and Lee Jordan.

"And then, Moody says I need to go to his classroom tomorrow and fix all the damage. I mean, just cause I accidentally burned down-"

"-Accidentally?" Lee's voice as laced with skepticism and amusement.

"Ok, so maybe I wanted to see what would happen if you set fire to that potted Chibus plant next to the window. It was just natural curiosity. I mean, Fire Salamanders eat them, so…"

"Yes, natural curiosity that innocently led you to burning the whole window ledge and table to ashes"

"Shut up, George. It wasn't deliberately destructive, it's not fair that I have an hour's detention tomorrow after dinner, we were going to use that time to work on redeveloping the-" at this his voice dropped and he whispered something that sounded suspiciously like 'snackboxes'.

"How're you two faring with those?" Lee muttered in a low voice. The three hurried over to their favourite table, and out of earshot.

But Ron had heard all he needed. The perfect plan for revenge was plotting itself out as he sat. All he needed was one little thing…

He reached over and prodded Hermione in the shoulder. "Hermione!" he hissed at her, "I need your help!"

"For the last time, Ron, I'm not writing your potions essay for you."

"No, it's not that. I need to learn how to do a spell properly by tomorrow evening"

Hermione stopped what she was doing for a moment, and then dropped her forehead into her head, groaning a muffled but audible "Merlin, not _again_".

After explaining to Hermione that it _wasn't_ a dragon he had to face, but rather his almost-as-formidable older brother, getting her to help was quite simple. And luckily for Ron, so was the basic spell he wanted to learn. Unfortunately, what he needed was a variation of the spell, which was a bit more complicated. Hermione was willing to give him a few tips, but stoutly refused to stay up all night or skip one of her classes to teach him. So Ron had worked by himself for hours into the night, eventually falling asleep in an armchair in the common room. Perhaps that was better, because the next day, when he saw Fred and George exiting the portrait hole to breakfast, he was struck with his second brilliant idea.

Quickly pulling out his wand, he looked around to make sure no one was watching, before performing a summoning charm. Moments later, an object came whizzing towards him, from the direction of the boys' dormitories. He caught the tiny bottle and stowed it safely in his robes, then hurried up to his dormitory to get dressed.

He practiced the spell during all his morning classes, pointing his wand surreptitiously under the table and muttering words under his breath. Unluckily, this spell was difficult to conceal, so more than once he had to cast a hasty Vanishing spell on whatever progress he was making. It wasn't until lunch that he was able to do it well enough that it would work for his purposes. At least the contents of the little bottle would help strengthen the spell.

Ron was exhausted, but pleased. He rewarded his considerable effort by sleeping through most of Divination, but just as the class was about to end, he was awakened by a pair of huge, magnified eyes peering at him, inches from his face. He gave a strangled yell and toppled off of his pouffe, hitting the floor with a solid _thud_. As he was dazedly getting up, he heard professor Trelawney's unusually sharp voice assign him what was sure to be an extra hour's worth of BSing for homework as punishment for not paying attention. Now thoroughly disgruntled, he grabbed his bag and thought irritably, _this plan had better be worth it._

Dinner came and went in a flash, and before he knew it he was walking towards the Defense against the Dark Arts classroom, anxiety and excitement mounting with every step. Ron was going to ask Hermione to stall Moody, but by some stroke of fortune she had told him and Harry that she needed to ask Moody a question about the curse they were studying, and Ron had casually suggested that she ask immediately after dinner. Because of this, Ron was basically home free, and didn't have to rely on Hermione's questionable acting skills.

Fred was supposed to come by at 7:00 sharp, and because of Moody's formidable reputation, Ron was willing to bet that Fred wouldn't dare be late. Ron approached the locked door to the DADA classroom and, looking around, tapped the lock with his wand and whispered "_Alohomora!"_ There was a small but audible click, and the door swung open. He checked his watch as he crept into the classroom.

6:57. Perfect.

He hoped that Hermione's question would take at least 5 minutes. Until 7:05 was all the time he needed. He looked around for a moment, and found a pot with dirt, and the shriveled, coal-black remains of a plant, presumably the work of his impulsive older brother. He placed the pot, which was vital to his plan, carefully on the table. He then went and crouched in the corner, out of the sightlines of anyone walking through the door. He waited.

Ron could hear himself breathing in and out, rather more rapidly than usual. His heart, too, was palpitating quicker than its normal rate. He glanced at his watch again. 6:58. Every minute felt simultaneously like an eternity, and as though no time had passed at all.

Suddenly, he heard the tiniest creak of a door, and moved his head up a fraction of an inch to see past the desk he was crouched behind. He saw a stocky, ginger haired boy. Excellent. Right on time.

"Uhh professor Moody? I'm here for my detention…" Fred called out apprehensively into the apparently empty classroom.

_Now or never, Ron, GO!_ His brain prodded him, and his body acted obediently. Ron watched as his brother took a few steps, and then pounced.

_"ORCHIDEOUS HEDERA!" _Ron's spell arced in the air, and hit the carefully placed pot. Immediately, twisting tendrils of ivy shot out of the soil and began to wrap themselves around the closest target: Fred.

Before the twin could move or react in any way, the vines had bound his arms to his torso, preventing him from drawing his wand. They also spread up his back, covering his robes and the back of his neck, and eventually finding purchase in his hair. Some tied his legs together, and down his feet to the floor, which they also grabbed hold of.

When Fred was thoroughly bound with thin, strong tendrils, Ron sauntered out of his hiding spot, and over to the pot. He pointed his wand at it and said "_finite_", before they blocked off Fred's breathing or circulation. He then took the little bottle of potion from his robes, and poured a single drop into the pot.

For a normal _orchideous_ spell, this would just cause the flowers to wilt, as Fred did to Ron's flowers. However, this particular version of the spell actually rooted the ivy in the soil, so ageing it a little just made the plant grow and strengthen. The vines holding Fred thickened, resisting the boy's frantic attempts to disengage himself from them.

"Bloody hell, Ron, what on earth was that about?"

"Why, just a drop of ageing potion, Fred. How kind of you to leave it lying in your dormitory. I daresay, you do know how to make it well." Ron pretended to inspect the ivy branch's immovable hold on his brother. "Ohh, I almost forgot-" he twirled his wand, and once more, said _"Orchideous!"_ A bunch of large orange flowers burst forth from his wand. Ron caught them neatly, and dropped them on Fred's head. Orange lilies: Revenge. He started walking out of the classroom.

"Ron, you bloody git, get back here! Moody'll see, and I'll tell him it was you. Just you wait, there'll be a ginger ferret running round the grounds-_mrphhggg!_" For Ron had flicked his wand at Fred, and the vines had obeyed his unspoken wish, and grown over his mouth. Not enough to stop him from breathing, of course. Just to get him to shut up.

Feeling buoyantly happy and flushed with success, Ron practically skipped back down the hall. He turned the corner and started back to the Common Room, when a rough voice caught the back of his robes.

"Gotcha, Weasley." The gruff voice growled in his ear.

Ron's heart stopped.

Turning around, elation draining away, Ron was brought face to (botched) face with none other than Mad-eye Moody.

"Thought you'd get away, now, did you boy? Remember, I see everything." Moody's electric blue eye whizzed around in its socket, emphasizing the point. "Right nasty bit of spellwork there. Beautiful for defensive use. Where'd you learn it?

"I- I… Hermione helped me, Sir. I don't know where it's from…" Ron was terrified, but it somehow appeared that Moody was less angry than he'd thought. In fact, it almost looked as though his gash of a mouth was quirked up in a smile.

"Brother giving you a hard time?" Moody's expression was inscrutable.

"Well… yes sir."

Moody looked around, then said, loud enough for Ron to hear, "I think I need to go ask Professor McGonagall about some course material, do you think your brother'd be able to handle cleaning up his mess by himself? I should only be gone for about… an hour or so…" Ron could've sworn he saw Moody's normal eye wink.

"I think he could, professor. I don't think he'd mind."

"Good. Why don't you head back to your dormitory then, Weasley? Ten points to Gryffindor, for practicing defensive magic."

Moody turned and walked, away from the DADA classroom. Ron stood, shocked, for a moment, and then nearly ran back to the Gryffindor Tower to tell Harry and Hermione.

Ron had almost started to regret the fact that Fred hadn't experienced any public humiliation, the way he himself had, as he went to bed the next night. However, he was in for a surprise the next morning. He was sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, and was just starting to make inroads into his pile of food, when an exhausted looking Fred walked in, with George in tow. Ron stared agape at Fred as he walked towards their table, then nudged Harry and Hermione and openly pointed.

It's an interesting thing about ivy, that when its little adhesive hooks decide to attach themselves to something, they are nearly impossible to unstick. This, apparently, Fred had learned the hard way. He was wearing a new pair of robes, as the old ones were likely damaged beyond repair by the vines growing on them, but he had apparently been unable to eradicate them from his hands, neck, and perhaps most embarrassingly, his face. George kept on looking at him, then chuckling and looking away. Much to Ron's delight, Fred appeared quite irritable. He strode over to Ron, who smiled up at the older boy innocently.

"Alright, Ron, you got me, I'll admit it." Hermione and Harry, Ron noted amusedly, were staring at Fred, astonished. Lots of the younger Gryffindors were giggling and even some of the Hufflepuffs one table over had noticed. "I'll offer you a deal. You get rid of all this-" he gestured to his face and hands, where leafy vines were clinging determinedly, "And I'll make it up to Fleur. I'll even get her to stop looking at you like you're a toad she found in her boot." Fred gave him an uncharacteristically serious look. "Please?"

Ron looked at Fred, then over to the Ravenclaw table where Fleur's blonde head was just distinguishable. He suddenly realized he didn't care anymore, what she thought of him. It's not like she was ever going to see him again after this year. Ron looked back at Fred, and gave him a wicked grin.

"_Never_."

_fin_


End file.
